The invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for making thermocopies by a thermosublimation transfer in which an ink carrier ribbon and a receiving material are brought opposite each other into a sublimation area in a predetermined spaced relationship relative to each other, and the ink carrier member is heated pixelwise for transferring an ink layer of a predetermined density from the ink carrier member to the receiving material.
Apparatuses for performing the above described method are known. In all these apparatuses, the ink carrier ribbon is heated by a heating element. A relatively high temperature and a relatively low thermal inertia, with maximum allowable magnitude (about 100 um), as well as relatively great electrical power of a recording head (200-2000 mW) required per pixel, results in that the working life of the recording heads is limited, and a large number of pixels on the recording head leads to waste of heat. Because of such factors as thermal inertia of the recording head, sublimation velocity of the ink, the recording time per pixel is relatively large (about 10 ms). Therefore, for producing large format images, an unacceptable time interval is required.